September 13, 2020 – Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Season of Creation II
The Week Ahead…
September 13 – Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 13 – 10:00am, Holy Eucharist on the River
Top left. About 10 friends from St. George’s witnessed her first service as priest, Reading the Gospel from Matthew, Receiving gifts including St. Peter’s Cross and a collection of stoles, leading Communion and trying on the stoles after the service.
We honored Carey Connors today who was ordained in Richmond on Sept. 12, 2020. We had her lead our first Eucharist since March. Yes, Eucharist is back – outside with a few differences.
1. Bulletin for Sept. 13, 10:00am, Holy Eucharist
2. Readings and Prayers Pentecost 15, Sept. 13, Holy Eucharist
September 13 – 11:15am – National Cathedral church service online
September 13 – 7:00pm, Evening Prayer – Join here at 6:30pm for gathering – service starts at 7pm Meeting ID 834 7356 6532 Password 748475
1. Bulletin for Sept. 13, 7:00pm, Evening Prayer
2. Readings and Prayers Pentecost 15, Sept. 13
September 16 – 10:00am – Ecumenical Bible Study through Zoom
September 20 – Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 20 – 10:00am, Holy Eucharist on the River
September 20 – 11:15am – National Cathedral church service online
September 20, 7:00pm, Evening Prayer – Join here at 6:30pm for gathering – service starts at 10am Meeting ID 834 7356 6532 Password 748475
Connecting our Stewardship Campaign to the Season of Creation
We begin the stewardship campaign in September with the distribution of pledge cards for 2021. We are also in the Season of Creation. Are they connected ?
Language from the Bible supports both the Season of Creation and our pledge campaign using the language of – planting, growth, production of fruit, and feeding.
Here’s some of our language and imagery, linking these practices, both ancient and continuing, with our common life at St. Peter’s:
- Plant: We begin with the seeds: Worship and prayer, baptism, evangelism, welcoming, pastoral care
- And the seeds soon grow: Education, communications, upkeep of buildings and grounds
- And produce fruit: Fellowship, belonging, new members, confirmation, marriages
- To feed people who are hungry in body and spirit: Village Harvest, Village Dinner, Christmas and Thanksgiving Season of Giving -welcoming community groups to our Church
- And our roots are deep: Tradition, reconciliation…
- Settled into the ground of our being: Jesus Christ
- Watered by the vows of the Baptismal Covenant – to continue in worship, repent and return, respect the dignity of others.
- Jesus said, “I am the vine, You are the branches…bear much fruit.”
- All of this depends on your gifts, regular income that provides the rector and staff; that lights, heats, and cools our buildings, that provides materials for worship, for service, for outreach.
Holy Cross Day, September 14
See Our Collection of Crosses
"O BLESSED Saviour, who by thy cross and passion hast given life unto the world: Grant that we thy servants may be given grace to take up the cross and follow thee through life and death; whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit we worship and glorify, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."
Holy Cross Day is Sept. 14 in honor of Christ’s self-offering on the cross for our salvation. The collect for Holy Cross Day recalls that Christ "was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world unto himself," and prays that "we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him" (BCP, p. 192). The themes of Holy Cross Day are powerfully expressed by the hymn "Lift high the cross" (Hymn 473).
This day has been a part of the Eastern Church. The feast entered the Western calendar in the seventh century after Emperor Heraclius recovered the cross from the Persians, who had carried it off in 614, 15 years earlier. According to the story, the emperor intended to carry the cross back into Jerusalem himself, but was unable to move forward until he took off his imperial garb and became a barefoot pilgrim. It only has been celebrated in the Episcopal Church with the current prayer book
Lectionary, September 20, 2020, Pentecost 16, Proper 20, Year A
I.Theme – Grace to all who ask. However, we often covet God’s power to forgive and God’s control over who is forgiven and how.
"Late Arriving Workers" – Jesus Mafa (1973)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Jonah 3:10-4:11
Psalm – Psalm 145:1-8 Page 801, BCP
Epistle –Philippians 1:21-30
Gospel – Matthew 20:1-16
The scriptures focus on God’s gift of grace in the Old Testament and Gospel readings. We should not covet it or second guess and we may wait on the promise. As the Psalm emphasizes, praise God’”wonderous works” and celebrate the mercy, compassion and goodness of God.
There is a sense of unity that should prevail as Paul stresses in the Epistle to the Philippians. They are bound together with Paul in a mutually supportive relationship — they share his conflict and suffering, because their entire struggle is a sharing in the sufferings of Christ. They are to live as free citizens — not of Rome, but of God’s coming rule on earth and stand firm in the face of adversity and to be loving and unselfish in their behavior towards one another.
In the Old Testament reading, Jonah, has run away to avoid delivering the message of forgiveness that God has sent him to proclaim. Jonah complains about God giving grace to those in Ninevah "for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing," and surely this cannot be for them? Jonah regarded God’s "steadfastness" and grace as the unique, covenantal possession of Israel. However, it was not unthinkable that God would "change his mind" with regard to the nations.
Ancient Nineveh was well known for its lawlessness and violence. Nineveh was the capital of Israel’s greatest enemy, Assyria. Assyria would later depose Israel sending them to Babylonia.
Yet Nineveh also represents second chances to hear and obey the Lord. However, Jonah becomes angry, deserts Ninevah . God then caused tree to grow over Jonah but then sent a worm to attack the bush and then sent the heat and wind against Jonah.
In the Gospel’s parable of the workers in the vineyard, Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to a foreman who hired laborers early in the morning, then successively throughout the day at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours. A twelve-hour day of manual labor, with the "burden of the work and the heat of the day" is a long day. That evening the foreman settled accounts, paying those who had worked a meager one hour the same as those who had worked twelve hours.
The repeated visits to the marketplace by the landowner to look for laborers is a warning to anticipate some other unexpected behavior from him. He is looking for the many to bring into the kingdom. In the Gospel, grace comes to those who work many or few hours. God’s grace is open to all.
For Jesus the parable teaches that the gift of eternal life is not the reward of human merit, but a free gift of divine grace. The sacrifices of the followers of Jesus will be honored by God, but the reward will so far outstrip the sacrifice that it can only be called sheer grace, something God gives us or brings about in our lives that we cannot earn or bring about on our own steam.
In an article in the The Chautauqan Daily, lecturer Amy-Jill Levine writes:
"Many of the people in Jesus’ audience would have been day laborers and identified with the people in the story.
"Equal wages for workers, no matter what time of day they were hired, was not an unfamiliar aspect to Jewish law.
"The shock of the parable so far is not that everybody was paid equally; it’s how they were paid and the expectation that the first hired would actually receive more,” Levine said.
“The problem is not about economics; it’s about social relations,” Levine said. “They’re thinking in terms of limited good. … They’re thinking in terms of what they think is fair, but the landowner is thinking in terms of what he thinks is just.”
"..perhaps the parable helps us redefine our sense of what good life, abundant living, means. We might have thought that the most important thing in life is to be fair, which means to be impartial. But perhaps the more important criterion is to be generous.”
The parable is part of the great reversal – first will be last and the last will be first.
Those who begrudge the landowners generosity were those who felt that they had earned what they received, rather than see their work and wages as gifts. The wages at stake (even at the moment of Jesus’ first telling of the parable) are not actual daily wages for vineyard-laborers, but forgiveness, life, and salvation for believers.
The scandal of this parable is that we are all equal recipients of God’s gifts. The scandal of our faith is that we are often covetous and jealous when God’s gifts of forgiveness and life are given to other in equal measure.
The reversal saying is also a word of challenge to the disciples in their attitudes toward women and children, and other "unimportant" people with whom Jesus chooses to mingle and eat, whom he heals and restores. The disciples could be among the last.
The disciples, hearing this strange saying about reversal of status probably identified with the last who would become first. But Jesus was using the saying to caution them that, in a spiritual sense, they are in danger of becoming the first who would be last. Jesus’ followers are to beware of spiritual arrogance that makes them the self-appointed elite of others of lower degree.
Read more about the Lectionary…
What is the Season of Creation ?
This is fourth year we have used this optional lectionary which begins Sept 1 and ends at St. Francis Day, Oct. 4. Usually Pentecost is the longest season from Pentecost Sunday until Advent. Now the Season of Creation, five Sundays, helps to break up the period we spend in Pentecost. Where did this come from ?
Since the 1980’s, the Eastern Orthodox Church has designated this time each year to delve more deeply into our relationships with God and with one another in the context of the magnificent creation in which we live. The Catholic Church also recognizes this season. The Church of England, as well as the Anglicans in Australia and New Zealand observe this season as well. Various churches across the United States also celebrate the Season of Creation. Bishop Shannon has blessed our observance, so that we at St Peter’s can join with Christians all over the world in this celebration.
The central focus of the month is on God–God as Creator. In his letter to the Romans, right up front, Paul makes this statement. “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things that God has made.” We know a lot about God simply by paying attention to God’s creation. And Jesus, who came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly, used his own attention to and love of the natural world in his teachings and parables, to help the people around him find the abundant life that can become ours through him. To be with Jesus through scripture and through the bread and wine is also to see and to know God the Creator of heaven and earth.
When we Christians consider all the “works thy hands hath made,” as the old hymn “How Great Thou Art” puts it, how do our relationships with God, with creation, and with one another grow richer and deeper? This question is also a focus of this five week Season of Creation.
The goal in worship then is to deepen our understanding of God as Creator, to celebrate God’s role as Creator, and to examine and deepen and widen our own relationships with God, creation, and with one another. With Bishop Shannon’s permission, we will be using scripture readings in this five week period that have been designed to help us to accomplish these goals. You can find out more about the readings in the article later in this newsletter, “The Readings for The Season of Creation.” At the Eucharist, we will be using the Eucharistic Prayer “We Give Thanks” which highlights the role of God as Creator and Jesus dwelling in nature as one of us to bring us abundant life.
My hope for this Season is that we can grow in our love of God as Creator, and also in our love of creation itself, and to consider why, as Christians, the natural world and our relationship with it matters deeply in the working out of our lives as the beloved children of God on this earth.
Recovering creation ?
“Traveling the Way of Love” was produced by the Episcopal to highlight the parts of the “Way of Love”, in this case GO! This episode focuses on Honoré Farm and Mill, a ministry in Marin County, California, named for St. Honoratus of Amiens, patron saint of bread bakers. It is the annual harvest day, where neighbors side neighbors come to gather up and help thresh the year’s crops. Modern milling techniques further process grain into flour that it is flavorless and starchy, rapidly converting to sugar in the body, even when labeled whole grain. It strips the grain of their nutrients
The work on this form is an example of recovering creation – stonemilling wheat
The problem for most people wasn’t actually wheat or gluten but rather industrial processing, which strips grains of their nutrients and divorces bread from traditional sourdough fermentation, which makes wheat more digestible. This is hardly care for creation
As the Rev. Elizabeth DeRuff describes – “Farming doesn’t have to be destructive.. Agriculture produces about 30% of those greenhouse gases and that is from our petroleum based chemicals and because they are using a lot of chemicals the soil is king of inert, it loses its life. This wheat all grown organically has very deep roots and so photosynthesis it brings down the carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas shuttles it through the plant into the roots and it become carbon sugars and the soil microbes eat the carbon sugars.” The wheat they produce can be digested by gluten intolerant people.
Season of Creation Devotional for Sept. 20
“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you”. Philippians 1:23b-24
From Presiding Bishop Michael Curry
“There are a lot of good hymns and spirituals about heaven and how wonderful it will be to rest from our labors and be there with the Lord. And this is true. The apostle Paul, when he wrote his letter to the Philippian Christians, was in prison and didn’t know if he was about to die. If so, he said, that would be just fine: “To die is gain.” But he went on to say that, although this world and its problems can be tiresome, he needed to stick around because there was still work to do. To remain, for Paul and for us, was “necessary for you.”
“Now, “you” isn’t just our loved ones, or even or neighbors, co-workers and folks we meet. “You” is also the world in which we live and breathe, the vineyard in which we toil.
“To “remain in the flesh” is hard work, because it calls us to be ever more intentional in our care for all around us, including creation itself. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once affirmed that “it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.” This world, and all that it holds, is in God’s hands. But as long as we remain in the flesh, then by God’s call it is in our hands as well.
Liberating, life-giving God, help us to know that we and the world you have created are truly the work of your hands. Give us knowledge and wisdom to care for your handiwork now and for future generations. Amen.”
Misuse of God’s Creation? Climate Change, Part 3 The Forests
Last week we tended to look down on earth from high dealing with rising temperatures, the effect on glaciers and water scarcity. This week we look at ground level to consider deforestation and next week the effect on the seas
Deforestation
Forests play a vital role in maintaining the balance of the Earth’s ecosystems. They provide habitat for more than half of all terrestrial species, help filter pollutants out of the air and water, and prevent soil erosion. Rainforests also provide essential hydrological (water-related) services. For example, they tend to result in higher dry season streamflow and river levels, since forests slow down the rate of water or rain run-off, and help it enter into the aquifer.
Without a tree cover, the water tends to run off quickly into the streams and rivers, often taking a lot of topsoil with it. Forests also help the regional climate as they cycle water to the interior of a continent. The shrinking of the Amazon Rainforest reduces regional rainfall, which in turn threatens the health of the remaining forest and of the agricultural land in Southern Brazil. This also results in an increased fire risk.
Forests and their soils also play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere depends on the distribution or exchange of carbon between different “carbon pools” as part of the carbon cycle. Forests and their soils are major carbon pools, as are oceans, agricultural soils, other vegetation, and wood products: the carbon stored in the woody part of trees and shrubs (known as “biomass”) and soils is about 50% more than that stored in the atmosphere.
Trees continuously exchange CO2 with the atmosphere. The release of CO2 into the air is due both to natural processes (respiration of trees at night and the decomposition of organic matter) and human processes (removal or destruction of trees). Similarly, CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by the action of photosynthesis, which results in carbon being integrated into the organic molecules used by plants, including the woody biomass of trees. Thus forests play a major role in regulating global temperatures by absorbing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and storing it in the form of wood and vegetation – a process referred to as “carbon sequestration”.
Unfortunately, the global benefits provided by trees are being threatened by deforestation and forest degradation. ‘Deforestation’ as a shorthand for tree loss. Forest ‘degradation’ happens when the forest gets degraded, for example due to unsustainable logging practices which remove the most valuable species, or artesanal charcoal production in which only a few trees are harvested. The Earth loses more than 18 million acres of forestland every year—an area larger than Ireland—according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Deforestation is a major cause of global warming. When trees are burned, their stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere. As a result, tropical deforestation (including forest degradation) is responsible for about 12-15 percent of total annual global warming emissions according to estimates released for the climate change meeting in Copenhagen.
The Western Forest Fires and Climate Change
Fires are burning across at least ten states in the western US, but the greatest conflagrations are across California and Oregon. California’s wildfires, driven by extreme blazes in August and September, have already burned more acres than any year on record. More than 3.5 million acres have burned in California, with over 2,500 more fires than at the same point in 2019. Oregon fires have burned more than 1 million acres.
The causes are linked in part to unique factors in 2020 that are not related to climate change. Meteorologists suggest a ridge of air over the Pacific Northwest, perhaps related to the cooling of Pacific waters under current La Niña conditions, is the likely culprit. Fire season usually ends around October, when autumn rains eliminate the threat. But this year in Southern California, those rains have not arrived
However, climate change is also a part of it. Observed warming and drying, lack of rain fall have significantly increased fire-season fuel aridity, fostering a more favorable fire environment across forested systems. The drought has gone on since 2012.
There has been an increase in drier air. Coupled with strong, warm winds, the fire risk was extreme. Warmer air over the high desert of Utah and Nevada has lower relative humidity and will become drier still as it descends into California. Drier air leads to more desiccation and greater fire risk.
Many climate change forecasts suggest that there will be less rain in Southern California in the fall in the future, and more rain in December and January. That means fires could continue later into the fall, greatly extending the fire risk season.
The Climate Council, an independent, community funded climate organization, suggests fire conditions are now more dangerous than they were in the past, with longer bushfire seasons, drought, drier fuels and soils, and record-breaking heat in Australia.
The gradual warming caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases makes fires more likely across the planet, as warmer air dries the soil and vegetation more, allowing it to ignite more readily. California is no exception: average annual temperatures in the state have increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, and the Central Valley and Southern California have warmed even more.
Increased forest fire activity across the western United States in recent decades has contributed to widespread forest mortality, carbon emissions, periods of degraded air quality, and substantial fire suppression expenditures
Make a Gift Today! 2. Contact the Rev Catherine Hicks, Rector 4. Server Schedule September 2020 5. Latest Newsletter-the Parish Post (September, 2020) 6. Calendar 9. Bulletins and Sermon A. Holy Eucharist Sunday Bulletin (Sept. 20, 2020 10:00am) B. Evening Prayer Sunday Bulletin (Sept. 13, 2020 7:00pm), Sermon
10. Recent Services: Readings and Prayers, Pentecost 12, August 23, 2020 Readings and Prayers, Pentecost 13, August 30, 2020 |
Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
A new “Tree Fund” – to maintain our investment in trees. Read the article and consider a gift.
The pavilion being constructed in memory of John R. Sellers, Sr., is almost complete. If you would like to make a donation in John’s memory to help cover the cost, write a check to St Peter’s, and write Pavilion/John Sellers on the memo line.
3-Minute Retreats invite you to take a short prayer break right at your computer. Spend some quiet time reflecting on a Scripture passage.
Knowing that not everyone prays at the same pace, you have control over the pace of the retreat. After each screen, a Continue button will appear. Click it when you are ready to move on. If you are new to online prayer, the basic timing of the screens will guide you through the experience.
Daily meditations in words and music.
Your daily prayer online, since 1999
“We invite you to make a ‘Sacred Space’ in your day, praying here and now, as you visit our website, with the help of scripture chosen every day and on-screen guidance.”
Saints of the Week, – Sept. 13 – Sept. 20, 2020
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13
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Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258 |
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14
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Holy Cross Day |
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15
15 |
[Catherine of Genoa], Mystic and Nurse, 1510 James Chisholm, Priest, 1855 |
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16
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Ninian, Bishop, c. 430 |
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17
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Hildegard of Bingen, 1170 |
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18 |
Edward Bouverie Pusey, Priest, 1882 Dag Hammarskjold, Diplomat, 1961 |
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19
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Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 690 |
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20
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John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs, 1871 |